The Clausewitz Collection (merged thread)

[Firn]

There is certainly no need or urge to give me a sir, I'm better off without that moniker

Perhaps we should bring the thread back on track, discussing the application of CvC to insurgency in general. Crefeld's interesting work merits another one.

What attracted me to that chapter of CvC was both the profound analysis carved in very fitting words and Mao's theories on guerilla warfare. It is well noted that Mao, just like Lenin had closely studied "On War" and when one has read his Yu Chi Chan one sees IMHO a very strong connection in thought and wording.

About the goal of the struggle:

Mao (Chapter 1)

There is no reason to consider guerrilla warfare separately from national policy. On the contrary, it must be organized and conducted in complete accord with national anti-Japanese policy. It is only who misinterpret guerrilla action who say, as does Jen Ch'i Shan, "The question of guerrilla hostilities is purely a military matter and not a political one." Those who maintain this simple point of view have lost sight of the political goal and the political effects of guerrilla action. Such a simple point of view will cause the people to lose confidence and will result in our defeat.

CvC (Book 8, Chapter 6B):

Now, this unity is the conception that war is only a part of political intercourse, therefore by no means an independent thing in itself.

We maintain, on the contrary: that war is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse, with a mixture of other means. We say, mixed with other means, in order thereby to maintain at the same time that this political intercourse does not cease by the war itself, is not changed into something quite different, but that, in its essence, it continues to exist, whatever may be the form of the means which it uses, and that the chief lines on which the events of the war progress, and to which they are attached, are only the general features of policy which run all through the war until peace takes place.

Accordingly, war can never be separated from political intercourse, and if, in the consideration of the matter, this is done in any way, all the threads of the different relations are, to a certain extent, broken, and we have before us a senseless thing without an object.

Take CvC:

National levies and armed peasantry cannot and should not be employed against the main body of the enemy's army, or even against any considerable corps of the same, they must not attempt to crack the nut, they must only gnaw on the surface and the borders.

Where no enemy is to be found, there is no want of courage to oppose him, and at the example thus given, the mass of the neighboring population gradually takes fire. Thus the fire spreads as it does in heather, and reaching at last that part of the surface of the soil on which the aggressor is based, it seizes his lines of communication and preys upon the vital thread by which his existence is supported.

Mao: (Chapter 2)

While these units function as guerrillas, they may be compared to innumerable gnats, which, by biting a giant both in front and in rear, ultimately exhaust him. They make themselves as unendurable as a group of cruel and hateful devils, and as they grow and attain gigantic proportions, they will find that their victim is not only exhausted but practically perishing. I

On could easily go on and on. That it is not to say that Clausewitz was the only inspiration, far from that. But one wonders why it seems so commonplace to see Mao basing his (military) thoughts primarily on Chinese sources.